A Treemap is a visualization of hierarchical data that uses squares to represent nodes in a tree. The size of a square depends upon a value assigned to it, based on some range of measurement. One drawback of this method is that complex or deep hierarchies are difficult to render for effective use.

The authors provide an excellent introduction to Treemaps, the current state of their use, as well as providing a method that allows the use of Treemaps visualizations with arbitrary shapes.

Computationally complex, Voronoi Treemaps may not be appropriate for real-time renderings of topic maps or domains for mapping.

The visualization of data domains as an aid to the creation of topic maps should include Voronoi Treemaps as part of its research agenda.

Is search passé? is an intriguing question asked at the Montangue Institute Review for August, 2010. Unfortunately, not being a member, I can’t summarize their answer for you.

It really isn’t that hard to guess some of them. I blogged about Blair and Maron saying twenty-five years ago:

Stated succinctly, it is impossibly difficult for users to predict the exact words, word combinations, and phrases that are used by all (or most) relevant documents and only (or primarily) by those documents, as can be seen in the following examples.

Documents and texts haven’t changed in the last twenty-five years. If anything, the problem has gotten worse due to the volume and variety of material that is now available for searching.

This is a semantic and therefore human judgment problem. Algorithms and “clever” data structures can assist human users in making those judgments, but can’t replace them in the loop.

Imagine a search engine that seeks the assistance of users on semantic issues. As opposed to the skulking around of current search engines and sites. Why not just ask? Politely.

A user-fed search engine with a topic map backend. That could be very interesting.

Possibilistic logic provides a good framework for dealing with merging problems when information is pervaded with uncertainty and inconsistency. Many merging operators in possibilistic logic have been proposed. However, there are still some important problems left unsolved.

Makes me curious about the “Many merging operators….” No promises of when but it would be interesting to start a list of those both within and without possibilistic logic.

KNIME (Konstanz Information Miner) is a user-friendly and comprehensive Open-Source data integration, processing, analysis, and exploration platform. From day one, KNIME has been developed using rigorous software engineering practices and is currently being used actively by over 6.000 professionals all over the world, both in industry and academia.

Read the KNIME features page for a very long list of potentially useful subject identity tests.

There is a place for string matching IRIs, but there is a world of subject identity beyond that as well.

This paper proposes a new approach to support creativity through assisting the discovery of unexpected associations across different domains. This is achieved by integrating information from heterogeneous domains into a single network, enabling the interactive discovery of links across the corresponding information resources. We discuss three different pattern of domain crossing associations in this context.

Does that sound familiar to anyone?

Part of the continuing irony that semantic integration research suffers from a lack of semantic integration.

I am just at the tip of this particular iceberg of research so please chime in with pointers to conferences, proceedings, articles, books, etc.

The main idea is to have an object representation of a topic map in any programming language that supports JSON without writing or generating mapping code and still being able to access the information with little to no knowledge of Topic Maps.TM/JSON first draft

Code written with no understanding of the inputs seems problematic to me. (The mother’s programming job in Snow Crash?)

TM/JSON does not appear to require ignorance of topic maps so perhaps programmers knowledgeable about topic maps will find it useful as well.

We all need to give it a close read and Robert the benefit of some feedback.

Which says every topic of House Bill type has one and only one name. And we should get an error warning if is it missing.

If that seems like a lot of trouble fix a work flow proofing glitch, consider this:

U.S. legislation typically runs hundreds, even thousands of pages with provisions that are relevant to particular constituencies. What if all those provisions and their constituencies were treated as subjects, represented by topics?

Everyone could read those provisions of interest to them or the ones they were interested in opposing (possibly the more popular of the two). Instead of 2,000 pages you might need to read only 3 to 5 pages.

Reading maybe 3 to 5 pages sounds more like transparency to me than dumping 2,000+ pages on my desk and calling it “transparency.”

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PS: My suggestion to fix the bill title: “Last Opaque Act of 2010.” Whether lobbyists, elected officials and agencies can hear it or not, transparency is coming, to the USA.

I must admit to some disappointment when I found it was collecting index columns and placing them together in a single table. I am sure that technique is quite valuable for data warehouses but isn’t what I think of when I use the phrase, “merging indexes.”

The article is well written and was worth reading. As I started to put it to one side, it occurred to me that perhaps I was too hasty in deciding it wasn’t relevant to topic maps.

What if I had a data warehouse with a “merged” index where collectively the columns supported queries based on subject identity? Or if I wanted to use a set of indexes from other applications (say Lucene for example), to query against for similar purposes?

Whether you are into .Net or not, you should add this one to your reading list.

When you are considering whether a map is a territory, consider the ways in which maps are treated like territories.

Maps are defended like territories. Suggest to one upper ontology that it should consider being more like another upper ontology if you want to see that in real life.

Maps are seen as destinations/territories. Witness the “convert to the latest ….. data model” efforts. A data model is nothing but a map. Advocates of a data map/model will not rest until all data bows to their map/model. (Rest easy, it never happens.)

Maps are seen as destinations/territories (2). The constructs of a map can be seen as subjects in their own right (in addition to its contents). Those subjects are implicitly recognized in conversion. (Topic maps enable those subjects to be made explicit.)

A low-cost, practical information retrieval system, if it were to be designed, would require a thesaurus, but one in which end-users would be able to browse research topics by means of an organization that is concept-based rather than term-based as is the typical thesaurus.

…. (while elsewhere)

It is our hypothesis that, when the thesaurus can be envisioned by users as a simple, yet meaningful, organization of concepts, the entire information system is much more likely to be useable in an efficient manner by novice users. (emphasis added)

It puzzles me that experts are building a system of concepts for novices to use. Do you suspect experts have different views of the domains in question than novices? And approach their search for information with different assumptions?

Any concept system designed by an expert is a prescriptive information retrieval system. It represents their view of the domain and not that of a novice. Or rather it represents how the expert thinks a novice should navigate the field.

While the expert’s view may be useful for some purposes, such as socializing a novice into a particular view of the domain, it may be more useful for novices to use a novice’s view of the domain. To build that we would need to turn to novices in a domain. Perhaps through the use of adaptive information retrieval, IR that adapts to its user, rather than the other way around.

Adaptive information retrieval systems, I like that, ones that grow to be more like their users and less like their builders with every use.

Oh, I guess I had better say what that means. 😉 Or, better yet, let that silver-tongued devil Lars Heuer say it for me:

It is a suite of tests for Topic Maps implementations, based around the various Topic Maps syntaxes. The intention is to help developers of Topic Maps implementations verify that their implementations are actually correct according to the specifications.

Each test consists of (at least) one input file with a corresponding CXTM file. If a Topic Maps implementation works correctly, it has to generate the same canonical output as specified by the reference CXTM file.

As a community, not to pick on Lars, we need to find better titles for our papers/posts, etc. Take this post for example, why not: “Crossdressing Topic Maps, A Web Service.”? I think that would get a lot more hits than its present title.